


The Second Dream

by rosncrntz



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula (2020), Dracula (BBC), Dracula (TV 2020), Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Bisexuality, Blood, Blood Drinking, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Poor Jonathan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22121881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosncrntz/pseuds/rosncrntz
Summary: “What is it you would like to dream of, Johnny?”Dracula gives Jonathan a choice. Red or white. To dream of her, or him. Jonathan is beautiful, and he deserves a beautiful dream, at least.
Relationships: Count Dracula/Jonathan Harker, Jonathan Harker/Mina Harker
Comments: 10
Kudos: 326





	The Second Dream

**Author's Note:**

> This was written very quickly and is highly imperfect - but here it is nonetheless. Basically just a ramble. Poor Jonathan, he deserved better. But please do enjoy, and let me know what you think!

The first time is always horribly messy. Nothing beautiful at all about it; that’s the way it is. A shame, really, for his blue-eyed Johnny could really be so beautiful, at times.

Four hundred years should have taught him what to expect. Young women with banshee cries, grown men weeping onto his collar, mothers clawing red welts across his breast and boys vomiting. He’d had some shockers of a first time. The knowledge of death made humans ugly. Uneven gaping mouths, crinkled eyes, crooked fingers, bent necks. There was nothing they were so repulsed by as the reaper, and there was nothing Dracula found so revolting as a loud and unpleasant lover.

Their blood was so sweet, though. Silver linings.

He had hoped Jonathan would be different. Such an affable young gentleman. Such a noble bearing. One of the most dignified profiles he had observed on earth. A lovely temperament, not gaudy. Practical, pragmatic, but tinged in that clichéd way with the rose-petalled glean of romanticism. A man such as he was formed out of sunlight.

To drink Jonathan Harker would be to bask in the sun.

He had tried, in his way, to ease the young man. It was the least he could do. It seemed polite. He never liked to think of himself as a monster, at least not entirely.

Jonathan was sat at the table. His eyes had closed. Red and blue veins, like the twigs of a tree in the wintertime, sprawled across the film that met his eyelashes. The mole beneath his eye. The silver trail that a tear had left on his cheek. The Count’s palm that ghosted from the eyelid to the cheek to the line of his jaw moved imperceptibly downward until the sharp nail of his thumb could catch the sensitive hollow of Jonathan’s neck, where his pulse, slightly hurried, beat closest to the skin, which was downy and pale.

Porcelain white, and soft, and as easily torn as tissue, it split beneath his movement with only a soft gasp from his partner, emitted over Dracula’s left shoulder. Dracula felt the breath of it on his ear, cold.

The noise, the hitch in Jonathan’s throat, could have been beautiful, were it not followed by a tensed hand beating against the shoulder in question, the writhing body pushing itself from its seat, and a stream of inanities choked from panicked lips, as Dracula’s mouth met the crimson gash he had formed in the neck and began to suck at it.

 _Please. Stop. Mercy. No. It hurts. Mina. Mina. Mina_

Closing his eyes, he drew his focus to the hot flush of the man’s blood slipping between his teeth and pooling across his tongue and tried to deafen himself against the clumsy cries of Jonathan Harker’s agony.

_Mina._

It was not elegant at all.

He had hoped.

Sated, for the moment, Dracula drew away, wiped his mouth, and noticed that Jonathan had passed out. For fear, for pain, for blood-loss, most likely. How disappointing, he thought, observing the pallid man slumped pathetically at the dining table, almost invisible against the bright roar of the hearth behind him, so much it swallowed him up. White on red. Red on white.

For a time, returning to his seat at the other end of the table, unable to keep himself from licking with a keen tongue the little blood that remained on his lip, he grew concerned that he had, indeed, killed Mr Harker. He had not taken him to be quite so weak. What a pity.

But then Mr Harker shuddered, spluttered, and leapt up.

“Ah, Mr Harker. Welcome back to the land of the living.”

He hadn’t the strength to argue, question, or even talk. He felt emptier than before, like someone had hollowed him out and left just a husk. The pain beneath his ear worried him, of course, but Jonathan did not have a mirror with which to observe it.

_“What is it you would like to dream of, Johnny?”_

He asked, the second time. A few days had passed since Dracula had first made that incision which now taunted him, pink and tender and oh so delicious. Jonathan, who had just finished his evening meal, was beginning to fall asleep. This was becoming a habit, Dracula observed. Exhaustion had become his daily companion; it rode on his back like an incubus, inky and heavy and hot. The aching of his spine protested his torments, demanded a sleep that he knew not how to give it.

Dracula saw the skull beneath Jonathan’s skin.

Now that was beautiful indeed.

“Pay attention, Johnny, I am talking to you.”

“… what? What?” came the trembling reply, half-sleeping.

The Count had drawn himself languidly from his chair and had begun to approach Jonathan. He approached him in a way that Jonathan recognised, and Jonathan’s body tensed at the sight of it. An emptiness like hunger as the whites of his eyes bled red. White on red. Or red on white? The air in the room grew sticky, thick, and the passage of it through his throat grew laboured as the Count’s hand played with the fabric at his shoulder, like a young lover dances with the appearance of their lover. The fingers moved from his shoulder to his tie, tensed along the starched line of his collar and finally settled along the young man’s neck, just in time to feel the bead of cold sweat which had formed there.

Sweat, or tears? Red, or white?

The Count smiled at this adorable show of fear, and crooned his question as one sings a lullaby to a child, “What is it you would like to dream of?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

It was the question of an Englishman, spoken in awkward politeness and, a few days earlier, Jonathan may even have accompanied it with one of those cringing smiles or uneasy laughs. But, in his current gauntness, Harker could no other accompaniment make but the heaving of his chest beneath the thin linen of his shirt. A trembling breath, shaking his lungs. A wordless plea for mercy.

It fell on deaf ears. Or, if not deaf, at least uncaring.

“Would you like to dream of her tonight?” Dracula asked, innocently, with a sort of sweet honeyed relish on his lips which made Jonathan shift in his seat. “But you dreamt of her already, haven’t you? Maybe you’d like a change.”

“Dreamt…? Of who? What are you talking about?” His tone was growing more frenzied. Dracula did not want this feed to resemble the last.

“Who else? Your Mina.”

“My… Mina…?”

“A couple of days ago you were calling out her name!” Dracula cried, “And now you seem to have forgotten her. Don’t you remember that dream you had? The first night you were here.”

“No! I…” Jonathan’s anger turned again toward familiar confusion. His mind was going. He was sure of it. Mina was now merely the tickling of a curl of hair on his forehead, a sharp spasm, a bright and sparkling laugh effervescing from a pink mouth. Mina was not a face anymore. He blotted it from his mind, if he thought longer on it, he would weep. “How did you know?”

“Know?”

“My… dream?”

Oh, lord, what fools these mortals be.

“Keep up, Johnny! I have tasted you already. I felt the dream. Sunlight streaming in through the window,” Jonathan could have sworn, for a second, Dracula’s voice grew _human_ , “And Mina! Ah! When I first saw that picture you keep of her, I could not imagine what you saw in her. All blonde hair, all sunshine-y saccharine sweetness, all virginal and submissive. But, oh, no! I was wrong. I see that now. I felt that, now. Tell me, Johnny, does she really fuck like that, or is that just wishful thinking?”

“Don’t you dare talk about her like that!”

Dracula jumped back, chuckling, “Hey, hey, hey! It’s alright, Johnny. A man has his needs, I understand. Well, it’s been four hundred years so I’m not sure I can say I understand anymore… but that’s beside the point. And, anyway, you never answered my question. Is it her you want to dream about?”

“When? What…?” Jonathan was growing desperate, tired. The pain in his neck was searing him now, and the flickering orange light from the fireplace was making him feel nauseous. His dinner was churning inside him. He felt needy, repulsed. He wanted to get out. He wanted to stay. His blood was screaming.

“If not of Mina… then the barmaid? Mina wasn’t joking, she is a pretty, comely thing, isn’t she? You’ve certainly thought about it, I know that. Often. Bleary, half-drunk after work, watching her from your seat in the corner of the pub, beside the window in the moonlight. Mina at home. You, and your depraved imaginings. Having your way with her over the bar. Behind the bar. Outside the back door. Of course, you never would, no. You’d never do that to poor Mina… and, besides, you’re too much of a coward to even strike up a conversation with her. Her name… Clara, right?”

“Stop…”

“Or maybe even the redhead… what was his name…?”

“Don’t.”

“No, maybe not.” Dracula returned to his place beside Jonathan, his voice smoothing over once again. He was growing tender again. Jonathan hated that.

When Dracula paused, and was able to make study of Jonathan’s face once again, he noticed that there was a sheen of sweat on the gentleman’s face, glittering on his cheekbone, the long line of his nose. He liked him best like this; quiet, almost demure, tired but alert. Like a bride.

Like this, pliant beneath the Count’s touch, the cadence of Jonathan’s heart could be excitement rather than fear. The movement of his breath inside his ribcage could just as easily be his arousal, not his terror. A cry of ecstasy, not of pain.

“Is there no one particular you would like? I’d like to make this easier for you, Johnny, I really would.”

“I can’t,” he spat through his teeth.

There was a new shade of fear painted in those blue eyes now; Dracula could not mistake it. Not fear for his life, nor fear of pain, but something more like an embarrassment, a fear of speaking, a terror of being heard. When his mouth stuttered open, no sound came. Not even a gasp. Not even a breath.

“What is it, Johnny? Who would you like to dream of?”

Jonathan’s blood was screaming. Obsession. Fear. White. Red. Dracula had never seen anything more beautiful than Jonathan Harker at this very moment, a weary confession in his clear eyes. He did not need to speak, not now. Dracula’s thumb drew fresh blood and, this time, Jonathan was silent.

His blood screamed at him. Words, this time. Clear words running in his veins, a name. _Mina. Mina. Mina._ But the Count drew the word from his open wound until he could no longer hear it.

Dracula had begun to drink his fill when he heard Jonathan’s voice, as warm and elegant as the sunlight, pouring into his ear,

“You.”


End file.
